Essays in economics
By: by Frank Schneider
Published: 2007
Language: eng
Number of pages: 208
Description: This dissertation consists of four essays. The topics broadly speaking cover industrial organization (essay one), corporate finance/law and economics (essay two) and political economy (essays three and four). The first essay is "Consolidation, Volume and Outcomes in Leukemia Treatment" (co-authored with Albert Bravo-Biosca). We empirically analyze the causal nature of the volume-outcome relationship to study the effect of consolidation on survival in the market of matched unrelated donor bone marrow transplants for leukemia treatment. Controlling for average hospital quality during the study period, we find that one additional transplant during the six months preceding a transplant is associated with a 1.5% increase in the patient's survival probability. We address the potential endogeneity due to time variant hospital quality with instrumental variables, using the number of competitors and their distance to a hospital as exogenous predictors of volume. Predicted volume is then used to establish a causal relationship between volume and outcome. The second essay is "Bankruptcy as a Legal Process" (co-authored with Mario-Alberto Gamboa-Cavazos). We empirically assess bankruptcy as a legal process. We examine a comprehensive reform to corporate bankruptcy law in Mexico, which streamlined the legal process and limits on litigation. Then we outline the ways in which bankruptcy law design affect a series of outcome variables. Using a hand-coded data set from court dockets, we measure procedural speed, recovery rates of creditors' claims, and violations to the absolute priority rule (APR); we also track and compare litigation throughout the bankruptcy process.

Our investigation of the reform finds: (1) a decrease in the average time spent in bankruptcy from 7.8 to 2.3 years; (2) an increase in average recovery rates from 19 to 32 cents on the dollar; and (3) a decrease in the frequency of APR violations from 29 to 2 percent. Structural and administrative changes explain about 50 percent of the improvement in our outcomes variables, while changes in the regulation of the process, particularly on the ability to litigate, explain the remaining portion. The third essay is "Patterns of Ethnic Group Segregation and Civil Conflict" (co-authored with Janina Matuszeski). We present a new index of ethnic geography, the Ethnic Diversity and Clustering (EDC) index, which measures the clustering of ethnic groups within a country, as well as the overall ethnic diversity of the country. Using digital map data for over 7000 linguistic groups around the world, we construct the EDC index for 189 countries. We also calculate the traditional Ethno-Linguistic Fractionalization (ELF) index of ethnic diversity for 189 countries, including 186 countries for which we also have the EDC index. In cross-country regressions, our EDC and ELF indices are significantly correlated with measures of civil war, including the number of conflicts, total time spent in war, and total combatant deaths. Evidence from regressions using both indices indicates that civil war is more frequent and severe in countries where citizens of a given ethnic group tend to be more clustered together. Results for the average duration of conflicts are weaker for both indices. In addition, higher levels of ethnic diversity and clustering are associated with an increased incidence of civil conflict for countries with the straighter borders typical of artificial states, but not for other countries. Our results are robust to the inclusion of controls for former colonial status, continent, and climate.

Our results are robust to the inclusion of controls for former colonial status, continent, and climate. Results for the ELF index are robust to a panel regression format, in which we control for lagged GDP per capita. The final essay is "Politicians, Transparency and Corruption". It is early stage research. I present new data for a sample of 98 countries on the regulation of conflicts of interest of politicians. The data covers details of financial and private business disclosure by parliamentarians as well as restrictions imposed on their outside business activities. I use the data to study (a) how countries regulate conflicts of interest and (b) the relationship between regulation and corruption. The following patterns emerge: Richer, more democratic, predominantly protestant and less ethnolinguistically fractionalized countries favor transparency as a regulatory tool for conflicts of interest. Poorer, predominantly catholic or muslim countries favor restrictions on politicians' private business activities. The key finding of this paper is that transparency on conflicts of interest is associated with better outcomes in terms of corruption, consistent with an emerging literature on the power of transparency as a private enforcement mechanism. Finally, the paper shows that--consistent with theory--transparency works well in countries with a free press. Hence, it is crucial for countries to consider the overall institutional environment when regulating conflicts of interest.
Notes: "May 2007."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of Economics)--Harvard University, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references.